


the long, howling night

by dalliancetreads



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Multi, Sci-Fi, Suicide, VAMPIRES IN SPACE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:39:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalliancetreads/pseuds/dalliancetreads
Summary: In a future where Earth is destroyed by aliens, the Volturi are sent into space with the last of the human race. The journey to the new-Earth-that-might-not-be takes centuries of spaceflight, and they have nothing but each others' company. Written for a tumblr prompt.





	the long, howling night

Aro studies his wife, intent, unblinking. She quirks an eyebrow at him. 

 

"Hurry up," she says, her voice like velvet mercury. "We don't have forever." 

 

They do, actually. The Ganymedes is 2.3 light years away from the vacant lot in space where Earth once spun. It's another hundred years away from science's best guess - a stab in the dark - of a habitable planet. And a god-knows-how-long until science's second-best guess. If the ship's limited resources could stretch that far. 

 

Through the viewfinder, the stars are a smear of screaming light. 

 

Aro looks again at his well-thumbed, plastic-coated playing cards. It's a shit hand. A small pile of treasures sits diplomatically in the middle of the table - just  _stuff_ , the human things they had a few minutes to cram in their pockets. An opera ticket, some Roman currency, dentures. The captain's hat crowns the pile, inky blue with a UN bleeding-copper crest. Gambling the captain's tenure is probably against regulations, but no-one's watching from Houston anymore. 

 

Sulpicia's eyes are dark and mischievous, and in them, stars blink. Even after four millennia, he can't read her poker face. 

 

"I'm calling it," he says. 

 

Sulpicia laughs - a lustrous, imperial sound. "You lose," she says, fanning her cards on the table while scooping the treasure with one arm. She dons the captain's hat, smiling devilishly. 

 

"Gods," he says, pushing away from the table. 

 

A door hisses and Caius strides in. He's still in his silver exosuit, and it looks insectile on his slender frame. His lashes are clumped with snap-frozen venom. A vampire could survive in the vacuum of space for about five minutes before their skin fissures; even with their many biological advantages over humans, there have been three near-fatal system failures aboard the craft. 

 

Sulpicia tilts her hat towards Caius. He surveys her and decides on a careful economy of oxygen. "So that's that, then," he says. "... _Captain_ , I've repaired the solar damage to the craft's hull." 

 

"Great," Sulpicia says. "Say that again, but this time while doing the Sprinkler." 

 

Aro speaks before Caius can protest. "That's an abuse of your station, dear. Against code. You don't want a mutiny on your hands, do you?" 

 

"Hm," Sulpicia says, mirroring her husband's sly grin. "I've got nothing else scheduled." 

 

*

 

Netochka sleeps on a sine wave, curled around a Tesla coil. There is a debate in the ranks - is she programmed with a personality? Aro and Marcus think so. The others have a less romantic view - she is a synthetic human hooked up to a blood-making machine, her recumbent head a mall-mannequin's head, her chest rising and falling due to the polymer bellows that oxidize her blood, her artificial membranes warmed by thermal bioware. They can't wake her up, though, to be sure. 

 

This is probably for the best, they decide, as Athenodora's teeth cut her wrist to ribbons. Sulpicia has the other arm; Aro the neck; Caius and Marcus take a leg each. They feed in companionable silence, and when they finish, they lick their chops carefully. It will take Netochka several weeks to regenerate and replenish; the vat of bone-marrow clicks on and gently stirs is hemocytoblasts.

 

The blood is enough to prevent starvation, but that is all. The coven daren't touch the humans in the holds below their feet, suspended in pendulous biosacs like fruit-bearing vines. There are only 498 of them left, and they need to populate an entire planet. The Volturi are playing the long game. 

 

The ship doesn't have the capacity for more than five vampires. Goodbye, empire. Hello, the barest outline of a new planet. Here's to a strange sun rising over an unknown ocean. 

 

*

 

They float in the rec room, bouncing off the netted walls. In the viewfinder, an orange nebula roars along the craft like a dragon. Its tongue coats them in embers; a ruinous, burning light. They fall together, naturally. Zero-gravity fucking takes some practice, but it's fun, giddy. Caius peels off Sulpicia's space suit with his teeth, and it floats with them like a voyeuristic ghost. Sulpicia wraps her legs around someone's face, pale fire in her stomach, captain's hat aslant on her head. She is being stroked by four pairs of hands; orange and attenuated limbs. They spin round like they're in a washing machine. They do the deep rinse and the spin cycle. Sulpicia clings too tightly and her nails draw venom, and it buds like tiny crystal balls. 

 

* 

 

Three months later, Marcus disables and crawls through the airlock. He doesn't get far, but he gets far enough. They watch him through the viewfinder as his body splinters into thirds, then tenths, then a thousand tiny pieces. 

 

Sulpicia wonders what took him so long. 

 

*

 

The captain ties her hair back while she waits for her husband to stop beating the alloyed walls with his body. Space's black bottom presses up against the viewfinder; no change of light indicates how much time passes. She waits, and when it's time she flips him back and eases him out of his space suit, inch by inch, gentle and firm like she's his fucking mother. 

 

"We couldn't have known," she says, perfunctorily, running her hands down his wounded body. She knows exactly what buttons to press and soon he's draped across a radiator with two fingers hooked inside him. He sucks on the praline skin of her neck and she makes a little come-hither motion which has him jerking like he's violated a Geneva convention. Tentatively she puts her other arm around him, like a baby, and rubs his back when he comes, choking and streaming venom. 

 

She gathers his discombobulated body up into an empty-promise of an embrace, presses her cheek to his cheek, breathes in his old-iron, graveyard smell. She doesn't want to say anything more, not the pragmatics, not yet. 

 

 


End file.
